Xiaoma Zhixing turns profitable for the first quarter, all thanks to Moore Threads

Question AI · Why does Pony.ai have a higher market value than WeRide, and what are the differences in their business models?

On March 26, Pony.ai released its unaudited financial results for Q4 and the full year of 2025. Data shows that Pony.ai achieved total revenue of $90.001 million (about 629 million RMB) in 2025, a 20.0% year-over-year increase. On the profit side, the company recorded a GAAP net profit of $75.5 million in Q4 2025, marking its first quarterly profit since inception.

On the surface, quarterly profitability suggests a major breakthrough in Pony.ai’s financial sustainability. However, closer inspection reveals that the core driver behind the net profit turning positive is a $130 million (about 930 million RMB) fair value change gain. Excluding this non-recurring investment gain, Pony.ai’s core operating losses continue to widen.

Core Business Losses Still Growing

The 2025 annual report highlights the $75.5 million GAAP net profit in Q4 as the most eye-catching point. For an autonomous driving company that has long been in “burning money” mode, quarterly profit is often seen as a critical milestone.

“Fast Horse Media” found that Pony.ai recorded a significant increase in fair value of trading financial assets in Q4 2025. Public information confirms that this $130 million gain mainly stems from Pony.ai’s earlier investment in GPU unicorn Mooresville Technologies. As Mooresville recently went public successfully and its stock price surged, Pony.ai’s holdings in these financial assets gained substantial unrealized gains.

This reliance on investment gains and fair value revaluation masks the true picture of Pony.ai’s daily operations.

After excluding share-based payments and fair value changes of financial assets, Pony.ai’s Non-GAAP net loss reached $174 million, significantly larger than the $132 million loss in 2024. Non-GAAP operating losses also expanded, from $158.5 million in 2024 to $230.1 million.

The worsening operating losses reflect Pony.ai’s high investments in R&D and business expansion. In 2025, Pony.ai’s Non-GAAP operating expenses hit $244 million, a 43.7% increase year-over-year. R&D spending alone totaled $196 million, up 42.5%.

Overall, Pony.ai’s total revenue and costs in 2025 amounted to $75.8 million, a 19.2% increase. With revenue growth slightly outpacing costs, gross profit for the year reached $14.2 million, up 24.2%. The overall gross margin improved slightly from 15.2% in 2024 to 15.7%, mainly due to a higher proportion of high-margin autonomous ride-hailing services in total revenue.

As of the end of 2025, Pony.ai’s cash and cash equivalents, short-term investments, restricted cash, and long-term debt instruments totaled $1.5148 billion (about 10.593 billion RMB). This ample cash reserve provides a buffer against ongoing operating losses and gives the company enough time to refine its unit economics and support its plan to double fleet size.

Two Major Paths Diverge

The autonomous driving industry is at a sensitive transition from technology validation to commercial realization.

During this period, capital markets no longer pay high premiums solely for testing miles or license counts. The real key indicator is whether companies can demonstrate sustainable profitability in their mobility service models.

Meanwhile, Pony.ai and WeRide, which released their financials simultaneously, are taking very different paths.

WeRide in 2025 achieved a total revenue of 684.6 million RMB, an 89.6% YoY increase. Its rapid growth was driven by explosive product revenue, which reached 359.8 million RMB, a 310.3% increase. This growth model is built on extensive deployment of autonomous taxis, shuttles, and sanitation vehicles. By selling vehicles, hardware kits, and integrated solutions, the company can quickly scale revenue in the short term.

Pony.ai’s revenue is comparatively smaller, at $90.001 million (about 629 million RMB), with a modest 20% YoY growth. Its revenue composition includes $32.8 million from licensing and application services, and $40.6 million from autonomous trucking, with only a 0.6% increase, showing stagnation. The fastest-growing segment is autonomous ride-hailing, which generated $16.6 million in 2025, up 128.6%. In Q4, ride-hailing revenue reached $6.66 million, a 159.5% YoY increase.

For autonomous driving companies, Pony.ai’s focus on building a passenger robotaxi network—despite slow growth in trucking—has led to a business model that, while not impressive in overall revenue growth, commands higher valuation from the capital market.

As of March 26, WeRide, primarily driven by product sales, has a market cap below $2.6 billion, while Pony.ai, focused on mobility services, is valued around $5 billion—nearly double. This reflects the different valuation logic the market applies to “equipment suppliers” versus “mobility operation platforms.”

The Challenge of Scale Expansion

In the commercialization of Robotaxi, laying out city networks and expanding fleet size are surface-level efforts; the core challenge remains achieving unit economics.

Over recent years, autonomous driving companies have been eager to announce the number of test or operation licenses obtained across various countries and cities. While global expansion boosts brand visibility, cross-border regulatory compliance, adapting to different road scenarios, and localized operational costs often drag down overall efficiency.

Pony.ai’s 2025 strategy is to focus on refining per-vehicle profitability. The financial report shows that its seventh-generation Robotaxi model, after just four months of operation, achieved break-even in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, two key first-tier cities. In Shenzhen, the average daily net revenue per vehicle hit a new high of 394 RMB, with 25 daily trips per vehicle. In Q1 2026, paid trips in Shenzhen already surpassed the total for all of 2025.

This micro-level profitability in core cities is a prerequisite for supporting macro-level fleet expansion.

As of March 2026, Pony.ai’s Robotaxi fleet exceeded 1,400 vehicles, with plans to grow to over 3,000 by year-end. To achieve this, Pony.ai has partnered with Toyota to lock in a production plan for 1,000 seventh-generation vehicles and is actively working with BAIC, GAC, and other automakers to develop fleet operation models.

Internationally, Pony.ai’s commercialization is progressing steadily. In March 2026, the company entered Croatia and launched commercial services in Qatar and Singapore, with Dubai’s fully autonomous testing and operation also underway. The company plans to expand to over 20 cities globally by the end of 2026, with nearly half of the operations outside China.

Behind this scale-up lies financial pressure. Doubling the fleet from 1,400 to over 3,000 vehicles will significantly increase costs for hardware procurement, depreciation, salaries for safety personnel and ground staff, and data center storage and computing. Pony.ai’s non-GAAP operating loss already reached $230 million in 2025.

In the coming quarters, Pony.ai needs to continuously demonstrate that as fleet size doubles, profitable cities will expand, and overall operating losses will gradually narrow due to scale effects.